How To Be Antiracist Book Club

As part of the Stronger Together initiative, the Office of Community Engagement is hosting book discussions this summer based on Ibram X. Kendi's book How to Exist an Antiracist. These pocket-size groups discussions are now closed for summer 2020. New groups will open in autumn 2020.

For those who are reading forth, here are some reflections questions from Chapters 1-ix to guide united states of america in critical cocky-reflection as we do the important work of condign antiracist. Part 2, with questions for Chapters 10-xviii, is also now available.

Introduction

The book'due south central message is that the opposite of "racist" isn't "not racist." The true reverse of "racist" is antiracist. "The adept news," Kendi writes, "is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist 1 minute and an antiracist the adjacent." What does it mean to have to constantly reaffirm your identity as an antiracist? Is at that place any benefit to the fact that you can't merely decide you are "not racist" or an antiracist and exist done with it?

"'Racist' is not- as Richard Spencer argues- a pejorative. It is not the worst word in the English language language; it is not the equivalent of a slur. Information technology is descriptive, and the only manner to undo racism is to consistently place and draw information technology- and then dismantle it. The attempt to plough this usefully descriptive term into an nearly unusable slur is, of form, designed to do the reverse: to freeze usa into inaction."

Chapter ane – Definitions

"What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities."

"No 1 becomes a racist or antiracist. We can but strive to be one or the other. We tin unknowingly strive to be a racist. We can knowingly strive to be an anti-racist. Like fighting an habit, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant cocky-criticism, and regular self-examination."

Chapter 2 – Dueling Consciousness

Kendi explores assimilation, segregationist, and anti-racist mindsets. What are some examples you lot've seen of each of these?

What is your reaction to the "War on Drugs" – the stiffer sentencing policies for drug crimes and the mass incarceration of not-fierce offenders? How does this fit within our current tensions effectually racial disparities in police enforcement and police brutality toward Black individuals?

Chapter three – Ability

Kendi recounts the history of race as constructs. Accept yous heard this history before? What is your response to hearing the story of Prince Henry enslaving Africans? And Linnaeus' racial bureaucracy? How practise these mesh with stories you lot have heard about race growing up?

"This cause and upshot – a racist power creates racist policies out of raw self-involvement; the racist policies necessitate racist ideas to justify them – lingers over the life of racism." (p42)

Chapter 4 – Biology

Microaggressions, i.e. racial abuse – When have you witnessed or been a perpetrator of microaggressions?  "cursory, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their grouping membership?" (p46)

What is the touch of this persistent daily hum of racist abuse? Kendi lists distress, anger, worry, low, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide. (p46)

Disparities in punishment and education – "I wonder if her racist ideas chalked up my resistance to my Blackness and therefore characterized information technology as misbehavior, not distress. With racist teachers, misbehaving kids of colour exercise not receive inquiry and empathy and legitimacy. Nosotros receive orders and punishments and 'no excuses,' as if nosotros were adults. The Blackness child is ill-treated like an adult, and the Black adult is sick-treated similar a child." (p47)

Racial categories – Kendi argues that every bit long equally racial inequities exist, that racial categories are essential in identifying those inequities and addressing racist policies. (p54) This is why a color-blind system doesn't work. It neglects to acknowledge the racial inequities and maintains the existing racial hierarchies and power structures. How practise you respond to those who say they practise not "see color?" How might we respond?

Affiliate five – Ethnicity

"…The key double standard in indigenous racism: loving 1's position on the ladder higher up over ethnic groups and hating one'due south position below that of other indigenous groups." (p65) Have yous experienced this tension before?  Why do we eat racist/sexist/classist ideas near other groups and reject racist/sexist/classist ideas about our own?

Chapter 6 – Body

Kendi quotes President Neb Clinton proverb – "By experience or at least what people run into on the news at dark, violence for those White people too often has a Black face up." (p70) He then goes on to comment, "Americans today see the Black body as larger, more threatening, more potentially harmful, and more likely to require force to control than a similarly sized White body, according to researchers." What take you observed near media portrayals of violence? What kinds of antiracist strategies can challenge these racialized depictions of violence?

"Nosotros were unarmed, but we knew that Blackness armed the states even though we had no guns. Whiteness disarmed the cops – turned them into fearful potential victims – even when they were approaching a grouping of clearly outstrapped and anxious loftier schoolhouse kids… Unarmed black bodies – which apparently await armed to fearful officers – are about twice equally likely to be killed equally unarmed White bodies." How exercise these views of the Black torso equally inherently dangerous play into the recent tragic and deadly law encounters, eastward.thousand. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Eric Gardner?

What is your response to Kendi's clarification of the Vehement Criminal offence Control and Police Enforcement Deed (p 74)? How did this act perpetuate the correlation of Blackness with violence? What were some of the unintended consequences?

What about the correlation of violence with poverty and unemployment? (p79) Advocates for defunding the police argue investment in jobs programs and other services are more than effective in reducing violence and crime in low income communities. What are the possibilities and challenges of moving in this direction?

On page 75-76, Kendi addresses the depictions of the inner city equally perpetuating and breeding violence. "Nosotros, the young Black super-predators, were apparently being raised with an unprecedented inclination toward violence – in a nation that presumably did not enhance White slaveholders, lynchers, officials, venture capitalists, financiers, drunk drivers, and war hawks to be violent." What is your reaction to this tendency to overlook White violence? What do you know almost the violence of lynching, racial terrorism, and the treatment of slaves? In what ways have we best-selling and made restitution for those violent acts?

Affiliate 7 – Culture

"The act of making a cultural standard and bureaucracy is what creates cultural racism." (p 83) What are some of the cultural standards we hold? Kendi says to be antiracist is to reject cultural standards and level cultural differences. How might we practise that?

"The cultural African survived in the Americans, created a strong and complex civilisation with Western 'outward' forms 'while retaining inner [African] values'…The same cultural African breathed life into the African American civilization that raised me." (p 86) Hash out some of the aspects of culture Kendi talks about, e.g. fresh fashion, Black church building, soul food, Hip Hop. Does any of Kendi's descriptions challenge racialized images and stereotypes for you? How might we, as cultural antiracists, reject cultural standards in these areas and equalize cultural differences among racial groups (p81)?

Chapter 8 – Beliefs

Kendi says that Black individual mistakes are generalized to the mistakes of the race, while White individual mistakes are seen as individual mistakes and often met with second chances and empathy. How accept you seen this play out in your experience?

The achievement gap and standardized tests – "The utilize of standardized tests to mensurate aptitude and intelligence is i of the virtually effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies." (p 101) What is your response to the context and history that Kendi brings to tests like the SAT and GRE? Why do we proceed to use these tests? What would changing educational structures and admissions look like?

Looking at the racial disparities in funding for didactics and resourcing of schools and teachers, Kendi says "The racial problem is the opportunity gap, equally antiracist reformers call it, not the accomplishment gap." (103) How do we move toward creating opportunities for more than children to succeed inside and outside of schoolhouse? How do we admit and celebrate different kinds of intelligence?

Chapter 9 – Color

Kendi talks well-nigh the dueling consciousness of antiracist pride in one'southward ain race and assimilationist want to be another race. (p 109) For him, information technology was wearing colored contact lenses to portray himself as lighter. He also talks near white people tanning to become darker. In his words, "to be antiracist is not to opposite the beauty standard. To exist antiracist is to eliminate any standard based on pare, eye colour, hair texture…to exist antiracist is to diversify our standards of beauty similar our standards of culture or intelligence, to see beauty equally in all peel colors, broad and thin noses, kinky and straight pilus, calorie-free and nighttime eyes. To be an antiracist is to build and live in a beauty culture that accentuates instead of erases our natural beauty." (p 113) What would an antiracist dazzler culture look similar? What do we demand to change to get in that location?

How take you experienced the dueling consciousness of pride in one'southward own trunk and assimilationist desire to fit in with others?

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View Role 2: Chapters 10-18.

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Source: https://dce.olemiss.edu/how-to-be-an-antiracist-reading-guide-part-1/

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